The Anderson Platoon
by Pierre Schoendoerffer
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VHS Tape Cover Information
Director: Pierre SchoendoerfferEdition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Unknown)
Format: Black & White, NTSC
Running Time: 65 minutes
Release Date: 2000-06-16
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Publisher: Homevision
Studio: Homevision
VHS Movie Reviews of The Anderson Platoon
Movie Review: The Vietnam Documentary you didn't see on CBS
Summary: 5 Stars
I was wondering [while viewing this remarkable film] why I never saw it as a kid during Vietnam on the U.S. media. I realized why it was buried in the American press soon enough. It showed Americans helping sick women, children and wounded enemy personnel --- while being shot to pieces.
Summary of The Anderson Platoon
This Oscar?-winning documentary confronts the realties of war--any war. The Anderson Platoon was an integrated combat unit in Vietnam led by an African-American West Pointer, Lt. Joseph B. Anderson. In 1966, producer Pierre Schoendorffer and his cameraman spent six weeks filming the men of the Anderson platoon as they ate, slept, fought, and died. The soldiers' faces say much more than words ever could about the tension, frustration, anger, and stark realties of war.French documentarian Pierre Schoendorffer served as a combat soldier in Vietnam in the 1950s during France's quagmire. In the fall of 1966, he returned with a cameraman and spent six weeks with an American infantry platoon. This film, which won a 1968 Best Foreign Documentary Oscar, is stark and riveting. Commanded by a West Point graduate, Lieutenant Joseph Anderson, the 33-man platoon Schoendorffer traveled with was a cross-section of America. Perhaps as the film was shot relatively early in the war, the soldiers still seem motivated and even naive, though it seems to be dawning on everyone that their task may well be hopeless. Exhausting patrols to hunt the Viet Cong turn up nothing but deserted camps, and at one point when the platoon is taking heavy gunfire, you can hear an American yelling that he can't tell where the shooting is coming from. Schoendorffer refrains from making any political statements and offers only the most minimal narration to the black-and-white footage, none of which appears to have been staged for the camera. When the body of a young soldier killed in an ambush is loaded aboard a helicopter, the pain of the scene is palpable. At one point the platoon is shown getting a detailed briefing on a mission, only to have the plans abruptly change and the helicopters drop them into a battle where they have virtually no idea what their role is supposed to be. The Anderson Platoon doesn't tell you, it shows you, and this remarkable film resonates deeply. --Robert J. McNamara
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